Will Bunch

STAFF COLUMNIST

Will Bunch has worked at the Daily News for 20-plus years and is now senior writer. Since 2005, he’s written the uber-opinionated, fair-but-dangerously unbalanced opinion blog "Attytood," covering a range of topics (but mostly politics and the media these days); it’s been named best blog in the state by the Associated Press Managing Editors and best blog in the city by Philadelphia Magazine. He’s also authored three full-length books and three Amazon Kindle Single e-books, including 2015’s The Bern Identity: A Search for Bernie Sanders and the New American Dream. Prior to coming to Philadelphia, he worked at New York Newsday, where he was part of a team that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting.

Since the 2012 political conventions kicked off last week, you've heard all about a young mayor named Julian Castro, an old ex-mayor named Clint Eastwood, an empty chair named Imaginary Barack Obama -- plus a lot of cross-talk about whether you did or didn't build that.

"Don't mention the war" was the catch phrase in an iconic episodeof the John Cleese sit-com "Fawlty Towers," but it also could have been a theme night at either the Republican or Democratic convention. A nation at war has managed to stage its two major political confabs of the early 2010s with none of the trappings of a nation at war -- either in high-profile tributes to the American fighting men and women, or in any serious policy debate about why we fight...still, over a decade later.

Last week's high profile acceptance speech by Republican nominee Mitt Romney was a remarkable event -- even by the standards of a society that prides itself in willful ignorance of the efforts of volunteer soldiers halfway around the world. The candidate made no mention of Afghanistan or even "war," other than a passing reference to properity after World War II.

Romney's omission may have created an opening for a savvy pol like President Obama. But it's a safe bet that the commander-in-chief and his surrogates will be highly selective in what they talk about -- you may hear the name "Osama bin Laden" once or twice, unlike the GOP in Tampa -- and in what they don't talk about, including drone strikes that have killed dozens of civilians and inspired a new generation of terrorists and targeted assassination, even of American citizens.

Neither party is eager going to answer the one question a war-weary nation would actually like answered. When will it end?

"Politically, Afghanistan is difficult to discuss," Boston University international relations professor Andrew Bacevich told me by email yesterday. Bacevich is a retired colonel who fought in Vietnam and lost his son in Iraq, a self-identified conservative who became a leading critic of U.S. military policy."

The war is clearly not being won," Bacevich continued. "Yet neither party will say that's it's being lost. That might imply that the troops are somehow at fault. By and large, the attention of a war-weary and cash-strapped electorate lies elsewhere. Keeping mum on the subject is the expedient way to go."

Perhaps so. In a couple days, the Democrats, their glitzy stage and 15,000 reporters will be leaving Charlotte in a hurray. But just under 100,000 American troops on Afghanistan will still be coming home in agonizingly slow motion.